Neal Adams (born June 12, 1941, Governors Island, Manhattan, New York City) is an American comic book and commercial artist best known helping to create some of the definitive modern imagery of the DC Comics characters Superman, Batman and Green Arrow among others.

Biography

Early life and career

Strange Adventures #207 (Dec. 1967): One of Adams's earliest DC Comics covers, and his first for his signature character Deadman, already shows a mature style and a boundary-pushing innovation for the time.

Adams attended the High School of Industrial Art in Manhattan, and shortly after graduation began working in the advertising industry. Interested in comic books, he unsuccessfully submitted art samples to DC Comics, but did find uncredited freelance work drawing Bat Masterson and Archie Comics. (Neal Adams Entertainment) In 1962, Adams began his comics career in earnest at the NEA newspaper syndicated, working as an anonymous assistant on such comic strips as Peter Scratch, Rip Kirby, and The Heart of Juliet Jones before being given his own strip, Ben Casey, based on the medical drama TV series. This comic strip ran from 1962 through 1965.

This led to a stint at Marvel Comics, where Adams teamed with writer Roy Thomas on X-Men, then on the verge of cancellation. Though the duo failed to save the title (which ended its initial run with #66), their collaboration on issues #56-63 (May-Dec. 1969) — and on the "Kree-Skrull War" arc of The Avengers #93-97 (Nov. 1971 - May 1972) — produced what comics historians regard as some of Marvel's creative highlights of the era. He also collaborated with Stan Lee on two issues of The Mighty Thor.

Continuity and creators' rights

Green Lantern (vol. 2) #76 (April 1970). Cover art by Neal Adams.

In the early 1970s, Adams and frequent writing collaborator Dennis O'Neil did a celebrated and, for the time, controversial revamping of the longstanding DC characters Green Lantern and Green Arrow, teaming them in a long story arc in the former's title in which the two undertook a social-commentary journey across America. Adams and O'Neil revitalized Batman with a series of noteworthy stories reestablishing the character's dark, brooding nature and taking the books away from the campy look and feel of the 1966-68 TV series. Adams' pencil drawings were frequently inked by artist Dick Giordano, with whom Adams formed Continuity Associates, a company that primarily supplied storyboards for motion pictures. In the early 1970s, Adams was the art director, costume designer, as well as the poster/Playbill illustrator for Warp, a science fiction stage play by Bury St. Edmund and Stuart Gordon that had had some cult success in Chicago, and which played on Broadway from Feb. 14-18, 1973, at the original Ambassador Theatre.

During the 1970s, Adams was politically active in the industry, and attempted to unionize its creative community. His efforts, along with precedents set by Atlas/Seaboard Comics' creator-friendly policies and other factors, helped lead to the modern industry's standard practice of returning original artwork to the artist, who can earn additional income from art sales to collectors. Adams notably and vocally helped lead the lobbying efforts that resulted in Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster receiving decades-overdue credit and some financial remuneration from DC.

In collaboration with Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Adams has championed an effort to get the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, which is operated by the government of Poland, to return the original artwork of Dina Babbitt. In exchange for his sparing her mother and herself from the gas chambers, Babbitt worked as an illustrator for Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele who wanted detailed paintings to demonstrate his pseudoscientific theories about Gypsy racial inferiority. Using text from Medoff, Adams illustrated a six-page graphic documentary about Babbitt that was inked by Joe Kubert and contains an introduction by Stan Lee. However, Adams deemphasizes any comparison between the Babbitt case and his struggle for creator rights, saying that her situation was "tragic" and "an atrocity."

Awards

Adams won Alley Awards in 1967 for Best Cover (Strange Adventures #207); in 1968 for Best Full-Length Story ("Track of the Hook" in The Brave and the Bold #79, with writer Bob Haney); and in 1969 for Best Pencil Artist. He was inducted into the Alley Award Hall of Fame in 1969.

Quotes

Harlan Ellison:
There are artists who come along who do wonderful work, innovative work, even stylistically seminal or germinal work, but they don't change the face of the craft or the social conscience of the industry. Neal did that.

Bob McLeod on breaking into comics in 1973:
Pat [Broderick] told me I really ought to meet Neal Adams, whom he had met at DC. . . . At that time, Neal held a position of respect in the industry that no one in comics since then has achieved. He was the single most respected artist in the business. . . . Neal looked at one of my samples and asked me what kind of work I was looking for. I said 'Anything that pays.' (By that time, I was down to my last $10. . . .) He just picked up the phone and called the production manager at Marvel and said, 'I've got a guy here who has some potential as, well, some potential as an artist, but I think he has a lot of potential as a letterer.' I was immediately hired at Marvel in the production department on Neal's recommendation, and they still didn't even want to see my portfolio. If I was good enough for Neal, I was good enough for them. (BobMcLeod.com)

Jim Shooter:
Frank [Miller] was a kid from Vermont who wanted to be a comics artist. He came to New York in 1977, I think, showed samples to his idol, Neal Adams, and got a world-record savage critique. He quit drawing for a while, sucked it up and tried again. Neal savaged him again, but this time he sought a second opinion and actually ended up getting a small job from Western Publishing, I think. Thus emboldened, he went to DC, and after getting savaged by Joe Orlando, got in to see art directorVinnie Colletta, who recognized talent and arranged for him to get a one-page war comic job.

Advocacy of expanding-Earth theory

Adams has put forth ideas on a new model of the universe in his Growing Earth Theory, a derivative of a widely discredited theory (credited to Samuel Warren Carey) that the Earth and every other celestial body are growing.

Neal Adams established a YouTube channel that features self-produced video shorts propounding his view of growing-Earth theory. ([1] )

Adams appeared on the radio show Coast to Coast with George Noory on March 16, 2006, Coast to Coast with Art Bell on August 12, 2006, and Coast to Coast with Ian Punnett on April 5, 2008 to discuss his theory. ([2])

He was also interviewed by Dr. Steven Novella on the Skeptics guide podcast, on episode 51, on July 12, 2006. ([3]) During this interview he discussed his model of the growing earth theory at length.